Healing Attachment Wounds: Trust, Emotional Safety & Honest Communication
Episode 4 — Therapist Insights on Miette’s Story (episode 1) & the Roots of Relational Struggles
In Episode 4 of The Yearning Heart Podcast, therapist Jennifer J. Lehr offers a deeper dive into the emotional themes raised in Episode 1. She explores how early attachment wounds, narcissistic dynamics, and emotional neglect shape our ability to trust, communicate, and form secure connections — and what healing looks like from the inside out.
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https://weconcile.com/yearning-heart-podcast
Summary
This Therapist Insights episode unpacks the psychological underpinnings of attachment injuries — how they form, how they show up in relationships, and how we begin to heal them. Jennifer explores the impact of early childhood dynamics, including experiences with narcissism and emotional withdrawal, and explains the importance of emotional safety, mutual compassion, and communication in rewiring these patterns. Listeners are guided to reflect on their own relational histories and take empowered steps toward connection, trust, and intimacy.
Takeaways
Attachment wounds stem from inadequate nurturing during childhood.
Narcissistic parents can hinder their child's emotional development.
Emotional safety is crucial for a connected relationship.
Listening without judgment fosters trust and understanding.
Trust can be easily broken, especially in challenging situations.
Expressing feelings honestly is vital for relationship health.
Self-soothing techniques can help manage anxiety in relationships.
Vulnerability is essential for building trust with partners.
Assuming the worst can lead to unnecessary conflict.
Understanding each other's experiences is key to a healthy relationship.
Quotes
"Narcissism negatively affects your child."
"Listening without judgment is crucial."
"You need to know what their feelings are."
Chapters
00:00Exploring Attachment Wounds and Relationships
07:41The Importance of Honest Expression in Relationships
09:05Introduction to Weconcile and Relationship Building
09:06The Importance of Communication in Relationships
Thank you
💗 Thanks for listening. If this episode helped you see your story more clearly, please share it with someone you care about — or explore more at The Yearning Heart Podcast.
Transcript
Jennifer Lehr (00:00)
What happens when we don't express our feelings honestly? Well, we are breaking trust, the other person doesn't know us, they don't know who we are, they don't know what we want. And it's as if you are relating to a mirage because you can't find the real person, you only are finding what they're showing to you.
I wanted to come back and explore a little more deeply some of the things that were brought up by Miette in episode one of the Yearning Heart podcast. In that conversation,
the importance of emotional safety and communication in her current relationship and her personal growth and understanding of what she desires in a partner. So this particular podcast brought up a lot of issues that are great issues to explore more deeply. The first one is this idea of attachment wounds.
So an attachment wound means that when you were growing up, somewhere along the line, you did not get what we call good enough nurturing or good enough parenting. And everybody has some degree of attachment wounding because there are no perfect parents. There's no perfect match. There's always places where there's a gap or something gets missed and it might be minor, it might be major.
In Miette's case, she's talking about attachment wounds specifically with her father because her father sounds to me, and I'm not going to diagnose someone without having met them. I've never met her father, but her father sounds like he's got some narcissism that is not good for Miette. So to talk about narcissism,
You know, we all, it's healthy to have some narcissism. We all are, you know, at two, you're supposed to be, you know, self-involved. That's part of growing up. Narcissism is part of being a healthy kid. But when you are an adult and you're still highly narcissistic, highly self-involved, that means there's sort of a developmental delay. So the narcissism,
of a parent, if you have a parent who's what I would call wounded in terms of that area, if your narcissism as a parent negatively affects your child because you can't tune into the child's needs,
The child's going to have issues with trusting that their needs will be met by future partners or future people. It will just affect them. So.
Attachment wounds connect to attachment styles. And different people have different attachment styles as we know. And let's bring in a little bit on attachment styles. So anxious attachment people can benefit from learning to self soothe, learning to get their focus off the other person, learning to focus on themselves, and learning how to get through
these difficult feelings that arise. Avoidant attachment people can really benefit from getting more in touch with their feelings, more facile, having more ability to verbalize what their feelings are. So just wanted to put that little piece in there.
One of the things Miette brings up is self-soothing. And she does this when she tells herself that she isn't going to assume the worst. Those weren't her exact words, but that was the idea. She's not gonna assume the worst about her partner. And that is a form of self-soothing. So instead of allowing herself to go into the fear and assuming the worst, she instead has a cognitive
conversation with herself, a conversation in her head where she says to herself, I'm not going to assume the worst about this person. And that helps her stay calm and more balanced.
She also talks a lot about emotional safety. And emotional safety is an essential ingredient for a safe and connected relationship. So,
In her case, she's learning how to trust her partner, how to talk about her feelings, how to be vulnerable, how to say what she needs, how to not go off into anxious behavior. emotional safety allows for deeper connection and understanding.
She also talks about listening. When she is listened to, she feels more space.
she feels a sense of safety, she feels she can relax, she feels like the other person is there for her. Now this is really important for her, that somebody listens to her without judgment and accepts her experience, even if their experience is different. Now in any relationship, if you want to have a good relationship,
you must be able to accept that your partner's experience is valid, even if you don't agree with it, it doesn't make sense to you. They're coming from their own history, their own perceptions, and part of making the relationship safe is listening and accepting what they say, even if it's different than what you believe or what your experience is.
And this brings us to trust because that is part of trust. Vulnerability is part of trust. Listening is part of trust, nonjudgmental listening. Being able to do what you say and say what you do. If you don't do what you say you're gonna do or your partner doesn't, trust is being broken. And we don't need to be in a relationship with broken trust.
for instance, you're, let's suppose your partner is an addict. Well, breaking trust is part of the deal because addicts are protecting their addiction, their need, their craving, and they will say what they need to say to get that need taken care of and trust will be broken over and over again. And if you're in that situation, you have to find a way to build yourself up, build your self worth up.
build your strength up so that you can eventually say, yes, I'm attached to this person, I love this person, but I don't need this behavior. I don't want to be in this behavior. I want something different. And you find the strength to move on or you find the strength to tell that person, you're gonna kick your addiction or I'm outta here. And then you see what they do. But that's another area
that shows how important trust is and how easily it can be broken.
another place this podcast brought up for me, is the idea of expressing feelings honestly.
What happens when we don't express our feelings honestly? Well, we are breaking trust, the other person doesn't know us, they don't know who we are, they don't know what we want. And it's as if you are relating to a mirage because you can't find the real person, you only are finding what they're showing to you.
And you need to know what their feelings are. They don't have to act their feelings out. If you're angry, you don't have to throw something, you could just say,
I feel angry about blah, blah, and it upsets me. Or I have this expectation that you would do this and when you didn't do it, it hurt my feelings. It doesn't mean you act out. It means that you are saying what you're feeling, how it impacted you, whatever happened, and what you want. Could you please tell me your feelings next time so I can know how.
how I want to respond and not just expect me to read your mind, for example.
Those are some things that came up for me that I wanted to open up and explore a little more, explain a little more so that you would have a better understanding of those things.
Jennifer (09:06)
Thank you for joining me in this podcast. I hope you found it both interesting and informative. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe. on whatever channel you like to use. You can also find me on social media, usually under WeConcile. And just a reminder that we have a relationship app called WeConcile out to help you create your best relationship. And it's in both the Apple App Stores and the Google Play Stores.